Most people, including us sometimes, have told bodybuilders that training the body parts only once or twice a week is enough. Recent researches, however, have found that the bodybuilders who train each of their muscle thrice a week achieve increased strength than those who work out less often. So, here’s how to increase workout frequency and achieve better results!
The research was conducted in St. Francis Xavier University, where Canadian scientists studied 29 men and women (who don’t work out) for six weeks. These men and women had to go through a full-body weight-training program. The program had them do squats, bench presses, incline dumbbell presses, pull downs, seated rows, dumbbell shoulder presses, leg extension/leg curl exercises, triceps extensions and barbell curls.
These people were divided into two groups. Group A had to do their exercises in three sets and had to complete their workout twice every week. Group B had to do their exercises in two sets and had to complete their workout thrice every week. Ultimately both the groups did the same sets of exercises for each muscle.
The squat strength improved by 28% for both groups. It was not the same regarding bench presses though: The group B candidates showed an improved strength of 30% in the bench presses while the group B resulted in 22%. For total lean muscle mass, Group B, again, proved better by showing an increase in 4 pounds while Group A had only 1 pound increase.
Does this mean that you must switch to training your body parts thrice a week from once a week? Not necessarily, because the candidates studied were untrained individuals. But still, you should take into account the fact that higher frequency of workout increases muscle mass. You might also be interested in knowing the fact that when Arnold Schwarzenegger was in his prime body shape, bodybuilders generally trained their body parts up to 3 times a week.
Our suggestion is to gradually increase your workout frequency until you reach the point of training each body part thrice per week. You don’t have to increase your overall effort of work out because you will be doing the same number of sets of exercises for each muscle group. This basically means that instead of doing, say, 15 sets once a week, you could do 5 sets thrice a week. The increased frequency of work out will gain you the most benefit.
